Nazi Germany

During the rise of the Third Reich and through World War II, van der Waerden remained at Leipzig, and passed up opportunities to leave Nazi Germany for Princeton and Utrecht. However, he was critical of the Nazis and refused to give up his Dutch nationality, both of which led to difficulties for him.[2]

Postwar career

Following the war, van der Waerden was repatriated to the Netherlands rather than returning to Leipzig (then under Soviet control), but struggled to find a position in the Dutch academic system, in part because his time in Germany made his politics suspect and in part due to Brouwer's opposition to Hilbert's school of mathematics. After a year visiting Johns Hopkins University and two years as a part-time professor, in 1950 van der Waerden filled the chair in mathematics at the University of Amsterdam.[3] In 1951 he moved to the University of Zurich, where he spent the rest of his career, supervising more than 40 Ph.D. students.

Notes

References

Alexander Soifer (2009), The Mathematical Coloring Book, Springer-Verlag ISBN978-0-387-74640-1. Soifer devotes four chapters and over 100 pages to biographical material about van der Waerden, some of which he had also published earlier in the journal Geombinatorics.